Griffiths: Lessons have been learned

Perth Glory Captain Rostyn Griffiths is confident the upcoming two-match road trip over the festive period will help "reignite" the team.

Glory face glamour side Melbourne City on Tuesday at AAMI Park and the skipper believes it’s a chance for the boys to bounce back and spark a turnaround in form.

“I think the fact we are playing away from home is a good thing at the moment,” Griffiths said.

“It gives us a chance to work on a few things and be a little bit resilient as a group. I think at this stage, we’ve obviously had a bit of a bad run and sometimes getting away, and getting away together and staying away together can reignite the flame.”

Griffiths says the team has reflected on their recent form and knows it's not good enough.

“Lessons are always learned whether we win or lose. You know, obviously, they’ve been harsh lessons for the group because we expected to be a lot better as we have been the last couple of games but we are trying something different, we’ve put in a new formation and thrown a few new players in and that’s always going to take a little bit of time to gel so I expect that to come to fruition over the next few weeks.”

“These next couple of games are going to be tough games and you know, we gotta learn our lessons pretty quickly otherwise we’ll get punished again.”

The midfield general is confident that Glory can replicate the same rich vein of form it showed in the latter half of last season in the New Year.

“The overall target obviously is going to be in the six; the finals slots and we’re still amongst that at the moment you know so, as bad as the whole situation feels, it’s not a crisis sort of situation but like you say, things can happen and you can go on a run like they did last year and all of a sudden, you’re up in the top couple and where you want to be.

“Obviously we don’t want to leave it too late and you don’t want to be having to rely on that situation. I’d rather win every week or every second week than have a ten game run sort of thing.”

“Once we sort of gel and click, I think we’ll see a huge improvement from our team.”

Glory face Melbourne City on Tuesday, December 27th at 4.50PM.

Perth will stay on the east coast and fly to Sydney to take on Western Sydney Wanderers on Sunday, January 1st, 2017 with kick-off at 4.50PM.

Both matches will be broadcast on Fox Sports and ABC radio.

Glory will play its first home match of the season against Wellington on January 5.